Son has a Raspberry Pi

[fossyant]

Or he will have in the morning as it's his birthday. Got a starter kit from maplin and a case, also have a Mame emulator from piMame to get going. The kit has everything you need, keyboard, mouse, HDMI, USB hub, power adapters, wIfi dongle and preloaded SD card.

Comes with Scratch and Python preloaded. Scratch looks fun to start with. Got a couple of books on order, but there is a tonne of stuff on the web and step by step lessons.

Apart from the obvious of using it as a media server, any other good stuff you can do.

 

[vernon]

Look at getting it to control things like light, motors etc. It will mean additional purchases such as breadboards, relays and assorted electrical components and I'd envisage these activities taking place once the novelty of programming for programming's sake starts to wear off.

I've been eyeing up the starter kit too - for myself but I'm currently too busy hacking CSS, Javascript, PHP and HTML to want to spend more time at the keyboard now that my shed as re-opened as an aeromodelling activity centre.

 

[MrJamie]

I got mine about a week ago, but haven't had time to play around with it much. I've just set it up as a media server for my TV, really quite impressive though.

There are quite a few boards and accessories, you can even wire the house lights through them and control them from wifi etc

 

[Archie_tect]

...or he could just play out Fossy!

 

[Sandra6]

Mr6 bought one for himself and one for youngest son a while ago. I haven't seen either of them in use.

 

[Fnaar]

We've got some banoffee pie in the fridge

 

[Deleted member 26715]

Running XBMC is the only use I put mine to, it's a bit slow but it's acceptable although I intend to get a Ouya soon on my next trip to the US in a couple of weeks, the Pi will be for sale then.

Just a remark on the Ouya, £99.99 here, $99.99 over there, no Mr Cameroon I don't think we live in Rip-off Britain.

Alan...

 

[ohnovino]

Mine is mostly used as a media PC running RaspBMC, but I do a little bit of electronic tinkering too. I've just bought a stepper motor and driver board on eBay (£1.85 including delivery from Hong Kong!) so I'm going to have a play with that over the weekend.

 

[fossyant]

Got it set up straight away as the starter kits come with linux preloaded. Seems to have quite a bit of stuff on there already. Straight onto wifi. Just downloaded a few classic roms to run mega drive and mame roms. Bought a separate SD already preloaded with emulators, mainly to cut time setting up. Wasnt any dearer than a blank sd.

Quite impressed and have a snazzy case for it.

 

[vernon]

Mr6 bought one for himself and one for youngest son a while ago. I haven't seen either of them in use.

That's my fear if I make a purchase.

 

[fossyant]

Have yet to get the wifi configured for the Mame emulator SD as I need to research getting into the code. The other SD card has a GUI interface for configuring.

 

[fossyant]

The books have arrived. He's off with the Pi for kids book. Already updated the OS, installed a Linux Office package and is busy configuring the printers. I will leave him too it. Once he has stuff on, I will then get him to back up the SD in case it gets bricked.

 

[biggs682]

We've got some banoffee pie in the fridge

we had home made lemon meringue pie one day last week it was lovely

will have to try a rasberry pi ....... and i thought my spelling was bad

 

[Yellow Fang]

Arduino microprocessor boards are better if you want my opinion. Raspberry Pi's are like PC motherboards but very much slower. Arduinos are like microprocessors you can program to read sensors or control devices with.

 

[slowmotion]

Recently, somebody launched their own rival Red Bull Baumgartner amateur high altitude jump by parachute. This time, the hero was a teddy bear. They took him up to 30 metres higher than the Red Bull record on a cheap meteo balloon, launched him, and filmed his descent. I think that the whole business was controlled by a Pi. It didn't cost a lot.

They are a wonderful way of getting kids to experiment, especially if they teach them to control mechanical/robotic stuff. Massive fun.